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Northern Virginia is a hotspot for sex trafficking, and for the safety of their own children, Fairfax County residents need to be able to recognize it and report it, according to area officials who participated in a town hall meeting called ‘Human Trafficking in our Backyard’ on May 3 in McLean.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. An illegal alien from El Salvador who was residing in Adelphi, Md., was sentenced on Friday to 132 months in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release, for recruiting a 15-year-old, pregnant runaway to engage in commercial sex acts for a trafficking ring with ties to the notorious street gang Mara Salvatrucha Thirteen (MS-13).

A Department of Homeland Security investigation has raised concerns that diplomats from Saudi Arabia are bringing that country’s practices of human rights abuse and trafficking to the United States. The investigation comes after two Philippine women were removed Tuesday from a McLean, Virginia, house belonging to the armed forces of the Islamic monarchy.

Mount Vernon  Child sex trafficking, a global epidemic, has not been a problem commonly associated with suburban Northern Virginia, one of the nation’s most affluent regions. That all changed with the recent convictions of several members of violent gangs, like MS-13 and the Underground Gangster Crips (UGC), who were charged and sentenced for trafficking teenage girls into prostitution in the commonwealth.

Six months ago, Barbara Amaya said she was watching a story on television about teenage girls being trafficked for sex in her Northern Virginia neighborhood when she realized that she, too, had been the victim of sex trafficking — four decades earlier.

Human trafficking has been described by the Justice Department as “a big moneymaker for criminals and a scourge to society” and a group that seeks to help those caught in its grips says the number of callers to its national hotline identifying themselves as victims is increasing — and that’s good.

RICHMOND — The attorney for a man accused of trafficking his daughters to other men for “companionship and affection” is seeking to exclude from trial information about his client’s previous conviction for attempting to sell his child.